Tour de Delhi

It’s a big, dusty, hot, crazy town. But we have an ace in the hole- the lovely Jenny, girlfriend of Ahna’s cousin Evan. We meet her two nights running, and eat great Goan and Tibetan food. She’s charming and smart and we hope she gets her visa soon so she can visit us!

While our evenings were spent gossiping with Jenny and listening to Nirvana cover bands, we’re here on a mission: we need to get yellow fever vaccines.
They’re very expensive in the states (hundreds of dollars!) and we figured we’d get them in Delhi.

A little research and we have the numbers of a couple of clinics that administer said vaccine.
I call to make appointments for us.
Can we come in tomorrow for vaccinations?
No.
Umm, why not?
No stock.

Okay. I call the next clinic. It’s deja vu all over again.
We are getting frustrated, and time is of the essence, because you need 10 days for the vaccine to be effective. We are leaving for Africa very soon.
Mr. Gurpreet Singh, manager of our fabulous B and B, offers to solve the problem for us.
He sends us out with the driver to All India Medical.

It’s a public hospital. Imagine your basic University Hospital, but in India. People everywhere: on gurneys in the hall, on the sidewalk. It’s also the epicenter of a noisy, large, protest against police inaction in some recent, upsetting cases of violence against women and children. We’re trying to stay in our happy places while we get out of the car.
The driver leads us through the crowds and sends us into the ER. But its the pediatric ER. A sadder place has never been seen. The doc sends us away. telling the driver we can’t get the vaccine at All India. Grrr.

More research at the hotel, and we are sent to the prosperous suburb of Gurgeon, to a private hospital, where we have been assured we can get vaccinated.
We have our own personal assistant to escort us to the proper floor, where we fill out admittance forms and pay an 800 (that’s $16) rupee fee for consult.

The doctor is wonderful, but when we tell her why we’re there, she shakes her head. No vaccine. We need to go to the clinic.

But they don’t have any vaccine! We tell her. Oh, yes, there’s a shortage. Maybe RML Hospital will have some, she suggests.

We stop at the cashier and get our 800 rupees back.

So, RML Hospital it is. Another public hospital.
The yellow fever vaccination clinic is inexplicably located in the psychiatric building. No one stops us: We just walk in and wander around the grounds. The patients are enjoying the morning sunshine. Ahna is looking for the clinic, and starts walking into the men’s ward. In the psych building. I’ve never seen her do such a quick about-face. She almost created a wormhole.

After quizzing some nice security guards, it turns out we’re in the right place, but the clinic is closed. It’s a holiday. This is getting silly.
Mr. Singh has one more trick up his sleeve. He knows of a private clinic that manages travel health for the embassies.
He accompanies us to the offices, and we follow the nurse into the exam room. Ahna hops on the table and gets her shot.
My turn. The nurse looks at me questioningly.
I need one too, I tell her. She makes a call to the front desk, and after much furtive whispering, informs me that there are no more vaccines.
Ahna got the last yellow fever vaccination in all of India. We’re halfway there!

More Rajasthan photos….

Rajasthan!

It deserves an exclamation point. The romance of the place endures. Forts, camels, dust, forts, forts, forts. Oh, and snake charmers.

We stayed in the most beautiful hotel in Jaipur, went to the magical Amber Fort, met a mercenary snake charmer, and bought some shoes and bangles. For some reason, I was a terrible negotiator at the shoe shop. I couldn’t resist those curled, pointy toes.
But I was merciless at the bangle shop. I paid only a third as much as I should have. We really need to work on our bargaining strategies.
We stumbled on the snake charmer outside the palace in Jaipur, and there was not a question we were going to take photos and tip him. He must have seen us coming, because it soon escalated into us coaxing the cobra (don’t be rude) and tipping him more. As Ahna was holding the snake, he was whispering into her ears “you should tip me 300 rupees”. We did.

Then it was off to Jodhpur, the blue city. The buildings are cooler with indigo paint, and the fort and palace were magnificent. On our way to the hotel, Rajesh stopped for us to buy the most glorious watermelon. We smashed it on the sink of the hotel and ate it with teaspoons. It was delicious.

Pushkar for one night, and we rode camels to the sunset. They are comfortable, and don’t smell nearly as bad as people say. When it’s time for a rest, they roll around in the sand like dogs. Camels are charming. Well they might smell, a little.
We also stopped in a bangle store (we might have a bangle problem- is there a program for that?), and bought a giant box of bracelets for about 20 bucks.
Dinner in dry Pushkar called for some “special tea”. They put the beer in a tea pot, and no one is the wiser. Illicit beer just tastes better.
Rajesh gave us the hint on that one. Have we mentioned we love our driver?

Our last stop is Udaipur, nestled against the mountains, and built on a lakeside. Apparently ” Octopussy” was filmed here, and they still use that little fact as a (long expired) marketing tool.
We explored the palaces- there are several- and wandered through the streets. Ahna got a henna design from a local artist, and we watched the sunsets on the rooftop with Rajesh.

More photos in the next post….

Let sleeping tigers lay

After spending so much time together, Rajesh is getting to know us pretty well.

Before he drops us off at the hotel (a huge echoey marble monstrosity),
he offers to bring us some beer. He’s back in time for sunset, and we climb the stairs to the roof, where we watch the feral pigs scavenge for food while we drink our Kingfishers.
The local agent stops by to inform us that our tiger safari will begin at 5:00 the next morning. We stop drinking beer.
A jeep is waiting for us in the morning dark and we hop in with a dutch couple and a lovely 87 year old englishman and his daughter.
The driver speeds maniacally through the villages toward the park gate, and we spend the next four hours bouncing around in a vain search for a tiger. We saw peacocks and antelope, langurs, kingfishers and eagles and spotted deer. But no tiger.
The disappointment was palpable (especially for the englishman, as he was leaving Ranthambore later that afternoon).
We were dropped off at the marble monstrosity and napped until our next foray. I took some advil to prepare for another bruising four hours in a jeep. This time we saw crocodiles and water snakes, langurs and sambar deer.
And as we were heading out of the park- a tiger! He was lazing in a gorge, nonplussed at all of the tourists goggling at him. We were (again) very lucky- it’s a huge park, and there are only 20 some tigers living there.
Still giddy from our tiger spotting, Rajesh took us to a local restaurant, where we pigged out on aloo gobi, dhal and chapati.

more photos- we have wifi now!

As you wish (that’s what Rajesh says, and we like it!)

(A quick preface: we are still processing India. It’s such a wonderful, strange place. So we will post a lot of photos, and not as much text. Maybe we’re being lazy bloggers, too. A little.)

Kujaraho is not exactly on the beaten path, and after only email correspondence and no deposit we were a little nervous whether we’d have a driver. But there he was, outside the tiny terminal, holding a sign with our names on it.

Awesome.
We dropped our bags at the hotel, made a quick stop at the Jain Temple, then to dinner at a rooftop restaurant. The parakeets were roosting nearby, and noisy flocks flew over to crowd the trees in the square. We drank lime and soda and watched the sunset.

We have no idea what we’re supposed to see while we’re here, but Rajesh does, and he picks us up at 6am to go to the main temple. Well, it was worth the early day. These temples are still a part of life in the village, and a constant stream of people are coming to pray and leave offerings.
What we didn’t know about Khajuraho is that this is the place from whence came the Kama Sutra. A couple of the temples are covered with elaborate erotic sculptures. This country is not afraid of death, and they mix their religion with sex (but in a sexy way, not a creepy way). The temples are beautiful, the morning is beautiful, and we hang out for hours watching the people and dodging the long tailed monkeys as they zoom by and tag us on the ankles with their disconcertingly humanlike paws.

We get in our air conditioned car, and four hours of driving gets us to Orccha. It’s a military outpost, with an old fort, a temple (shocking, I know) and spooky, gorgeous mausoleums called cenotaphs.
We explore the cenotaphs in the evening, as families swim in the nearby river. Huge honeycombs hang from the ceilings, and enormous vultures roost on the roofs. It’s fantastic.
In the morning we visit the fort, and are followed by a sweet, mangy pup who climbs into the high walls with us, and photobombs all of our pictures.
We walk through the market, and buy a few trinkets from a lovely family whose daughter ties bracelets to our wrists.
Ahna stopped to look at a scratch on her foot, and the baba at the adjacent temple came out to check on her. He went back into the temple and emerged with a bottle of something to put on the injury. We have no idea what it was, but it seemed to do the trick! This is a nice town.

Then it’s off to Agra, because of course we are going to see the Taj Mahal.
It’s the mausoleum to beat all mausoleums and it deserves its billing as a wonder of the world. So romantic, too.
We are there by 6:30 am , and immediately bump in to a family from the US. New Mexico, to be specific. The family lives in the town where Ahna went to college, Albuquerque. It’s a freaky, small world.
The next few hours we wander the grounds of the Taj, trying to get the perfect photo, and watching the wonderful parade of visitors.
We think you’d have to be pretty jaded and cold to not find the Taj a remarkable sight.
Rajesh took us to Agra fort, which was just as impressive (though not as romantic). A large family asked to take a photo with us, and half an hour later, every single one of them had posed individually. We loved it- the family photo is one of our favorites in this country.
Then we had to do what every tourist with a driver does in India: go to “factories” where you get to see how the local artists make their goods. Yes, they’re tourist traps, but it was fun to bargain, and the artisans did make beautiful things. I had my eye on a gorgeous marble inlaid box. It was only $1,600.00. Dang, I have good taste.

We wisely had only 2 nights scheduled in Agra, because there’s not much else there besides the Taj, unless you’re into water buffalo, dust and mosquitos.
On our way to Ranthambore, we drove through the countryside as the women harvested the wheat crop by hand, and hauled water from the well.
There are brick factories that look like they’ve been built by clumsy giants. Camels are hauling vegetables. It really feels like we’re in Rajasthan.

More photos on the next post!

Would you rather swim in cremains, or cow dung?

There’s no right answer. But everything is possible in India.

Oh, we’re so excited to take the the train!
It’s a classic way to travel in India.
Whee!

Our train from Calcutta to Varanasi is scheduled to leave at 10pm. We will travel overnight to arrive at 8am.
At the station, our porters jabber amongst themselves, and inform us there is a delay. Until 1:30. AM.
What??
Well, we are not accustomed to waiting for these sorts of things (you can take the girls out of America…)
I pop down to the ticket counter to see if there’s another train we can catch.
The agent looks at our tickets, looks at me.
“This train is very, very late”
I know. Is there another one that will get us to Varanasi sooner?
“It’s leaving at 1:30″.
Yes- is there one leaving sooner?
He looks at the ticket, looks at me.
Grins (probably because he knows I am spoiled westerner).
“You can wait upstairs. It’s air conditioned. No problem?”
I can’t resist a smile and head bob.
OK. No problem. I smile. We wait.

The train finally arrives, and after much pushing and shoving to get aboard, we find our berth. We’re sharing and AC second class berth with two men returning from a business trip. Um, OK.
By the time we get settled, it’s 2:30 am and Mr. Shiv. AKA the boss, suggests we get some sleep.
There are clean sheets, pillows and blankets. We try to get comfortable, but it’s a bad night’s sleep. Every stop wakes us, and the AC is freezing.
Finally, at 2pm, we arrive at Mughal Sarrai.
Mr Shiv is, fortunately, traveling to Varanasi, and he makes sure we get to our hotel safely. How nice is that?

Varanasi is one of the holiest places in India. If you are cremated here, and your ashes spread in the Ganges, you won’t be reincarnated. So, you’d better be sure you’re done with all your lives.

We take a twilight boat ride up the river, past the ghats full of bathers.
Stopping at the main ghat, we watch the nightly Aarti Ganga, a hindu ceremony. It’s beautiful- fire and music, flowers and chants.
Pilgrims crowd in boats around us, many of them drinking from the river. Guess they didn’t see that dead dog floating by?

Back out our hotel, there’s another blackout. We open the windows for some air and let in the mosquitos and scents of the cows living in the courtyard of our hotel. Oh, India.

The next morning it’s 90 degrees by 10 am, so we find a bicycle rickshaw driver to take us through town. His name is Ashok, and he could be 35 or 60. It’s difficult to say. His feet barely reach the pedals, and with two of us in his rickshaw, he’s working hard!
We have no agenda for the day, so Ashok suggest we stop at a sari shop. People, we know he’s getting a kickback if we buy, but he’s so nice, and we did want to look at saris.
The shop owner starts pulling out bold after bold of beautiful fabric and scarves. Ashok helps us try on saris. He got a kickback.

Then he pedaled us over to the main cremation ghat. It was still pretty early, but several pyres were already going, and men were bringing down more bodies. It was somber, but serene. We like how this culture is not afraid of death.
As we watch the the stacks of wood catch fire, thick smokes rises, and fat seeps out between the gaps.
Yes, it’s the circle of life and all, but, yuck.
After the fires burn out, the ashes are swept into the river. Groups of men are standing waist deep in the water, sifting for gold. Their boss rests in a boat under a parasol. They do not get to keep that gold.
If you ever hear us complaining about our jobs, you may punch us in the face, because we will never had to sift through human remains for funereal gold.

Later in the day, we arrange for a local conman/guide to take us around town on foot. Everyone is on the make in a tourist town, and Raj is no exception.
We throw ourselves fully into being ripped off by agreeing to visit a fortune teller. He calls himself Guruji, and equipped with our birthdates and soft, white-girl palms, he read our lives for us.
I will live to be 88, my lucky color is green. I need to meditate under a cold shower to disperse negative energy. At least I think that’s what he meant. Also, I’ve recently had my heart broken, and find it hard to trust people. That might be a little true….

Ahna has a mind for business, and her lucky color is rainbows!
And then our wallets were more empty, and we were going to the spice shop.

We enter the spice shop by walking through the ground level, where the cows are kept. It’s lovely, bottles of spices and scented oils line the walls. We’re served masala chai with fresh milk (very, very fresh- the cows are just outside the door). We bought ridiculously expensive masala powder. And then our wallets were really empty, and we smelled like sandalwood. Oh, India.

Next up: temples, temples, and more temples.

India! Now in smell-o-vision!

Oh, Calcutta!

We did not ease into India…flew into Kolkata, the third largest city with an urban population of 15 million (formerly Calcutta). People covered every sidewalk surface with life…sleeping, eating, laundry, bathing and even raising kiddos. Streets filled with cabs, bikes, rickshaws and the token cow or three was exciting. India is just as I had imagined from my favorite book, A Fine Balance. The characters came to life around every corner. From the beggars, comb sellers, tailors and beautiful sari clad women the scenes were overwhelming yet familiar.
We wandered little neighborhoods and came upon a religious ceremony where women were asking for blessings in a parade like fashion, the local flower market for the daily offerings to the Hindu gods and a neighborhood game of cricket. The kids and MB were pretty excited when I hit it over their houses. Not sure if its called a home run in cricket? The kids are the best part. They all want their picture taken and to practice english. We find them irresistible.
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Yes, Ahna is correct, we did not ease into India. It’s just there. In your face. Dust. Cows. Colors. Smells. Wonderful people. Awful poverty. Sparkling saris.
Cricket. Curry. Scams. Smiles.
I arrived in Calcutta a couple of days before Ahna, as she was stuck in Bangkok waiting for her visa.
So, what am I gonna do on my own in Calcutta? Oh, a walking tour sounds great! I book with a local company called Calcutta Walks, plan to meet the owner, Ifte, in front of the Esplanade Mansions at 8am the next day.
Delicious breakfast of masala dhosa and chai, and I’m on my way. However, it was the wrong way. Eeek!
I’m walking through the unbelievably noisy traffic (using your horn is actually written into the traffic law. The din unbelievable). Watching the city dwellers start their day. Well, I’m not so much watching as staring. Men are bathing in the street. Chai wallahs are selling tea at decrepit sidewalk stands. Women are shopping for vegetables at the local market.
In the muslim marketplace, they’re butchering chickens right there. I resolve to remain vegetarian during the entire time we’re in India.
So, I’m lost in Entally. Ok. The sun rises higher. It’s hot. Very, very hot at 11 am.
Trying to find my way back to the hotel, I pass Mother Theresa’s place 3 times. Stop to ask a security guard for help, and he calls over all of his buddies for a conference. They send me off, and smile sheepishly when I walk back by after I realize they had no idea where I wanted to go.
Sweaty and exhausted I finally get back to my hotel and collapse into the airconditioned restaurant.
The wait staff is very curious about where I’m from, and what I want to do in Calcutta. I tell them I want to see the book market, and one of them tells me I should take the bus “It will be a good Calcutta experience”!
And so I go down to AJC Bose Road, and catch the bus for a 10 rupee ride.
Now, this might be surprising, but I don’t speak any Hindi, so it took a minute to get the conductor to understand where I was going. Fortunately, everyone else on the bus- and I mean EVERYONE- helped me find my stop. It was a terrific introduction to the warmth of the Calcutta residents.
I wandered around the book market for an hour or so, breathing in the smells of textbooks, used paperbacks, comic books. Although it’s an open air market, it smells like a library. Yess!
Since I’d missed my official walking tour that morning, Ifte, the owner of the tour company,stops by the hotel that evening to discuss the next day’s plans. Wisely, he suggested a motorcycle tour (’cause I was kinda tired from my first day wandering in the city).
Next morning at 7:30, he’s there, and we’re off.
Calcutta’s history is fascinating, and we visit monuments, buildings and cemeteries. We stop for a morning snack of paratha and jalebis.
Ifte drove through the flower market where the vendors sell blooms for temple visitors’ tributes (pooja), and takes me to Kumortoli, the neighborhood where artisans make clay idols for temples and homes. The clay comes from the Hoogly River, and the statues are made and finished by hand. We stopped for piping hot chai and watched the action.
What a great way to see Calcutta. It assuaged all the anxieties that come with being in an unfamiliar city, and Ifte was the perfect company.
Anyone going to Calcutta? Call him!

Ahna arrived that night, and we went for a wander in the neighborhood. I was relieved the dead rat I’d stepped over for the last few days had finally been removed from the sidewalk.
We dodged touts and beggars, and listened to Calcuttans living their lives.
I was getting hungry, and was tired of expensive hotel food, so when a sizzling pan full of tomatoes and potatoes caught my eye, we stopped. Just in time for them to add chiles. After sneezing, I ordered a plate of chapati, dhal and the spicy potato. The cook smiled, gave me my plate, and we sat on a sidewalk planter while we sampled his delicious food. Total cost for the meal? Eight rupees. That’s about 14 cents. And it was delicious.

After another amazing breakfast of masala dhosas.We needed to make plans for the next leg of our trip, so we took a honking taxi to the railway ticket office. It was like stepping back in time 60 years. While they do have computers, they’re running DOS. And everything is handwritten in gigantic ledger books. After a two hour wait, we finally booked our tickets for Varanasi.
Then we started walking. And walking. Along the river, through the flower market, past the warehouses where the beautiful transport trucks were loading and unloading goods.
Finally wandered into the neighborhood of Sovabazar.
We heard music and drums in the distance, and people were walking around, soaking wet. Huh?
We’d stumbled on a pooja for Kali. Devotees take part in a 100 meter procession, where they prostrate themselves on the ground every 4 steps, all the while being sprinkled with water from bystanders. It takes a while to get from point A to point B. The neighbors were very happy to have us there, and pulled us into the procession. It’s good luck to touch the devotees, and people were holding their babies against the soaking wet penitents.
That night, more street food in the form of the outrageously delicious kati roll. It’s kind of like an indian burrito. Dang, they’re good.

More sightseeing the next day: Victoria Monument, where entire families had their photos taken with Ahna, the Maidan, and back to the Kumortoli neighborhood. We have found that wandering the streets is one of our favorite ways to see a city (even when we do get a little lost). This proved no exception, as we came upon a group of young men playing cricket. They smiled and let us take photos, and then Ahna got a chance to bat. And did she! What would have been a home run in baseball is called a six in cricket. She sent that ball over the roof, and all the guys whooped. Awesome.

Our last night in Calcutta took us to the local mall, where there was a Lush, Guess, Tag Hauer, Man United, and many other western branded stores. Such a stark contrast to the poverty on the street. But I’m not ashamed to say the air-conditioning was divine.

Hey, Hanoi. How YOU doin’?

We flew into Hanoi around midnight, where a driver whisked us in his minivan to the terrific Finnegan’s Hotel. It was pretty quiet, since there’s a curfew in the city, except for the flower vendors zooming along with thousands of mums stacked on their bikes.

The morning dawned gloomy and misty, and we took advantage of the weather to sleep in a bit. When we did arise, it was ON.
HO CHI MINH! WOoo.
A quick taxi ride got us to the site, and we followed the directions of the uniformed soldiers as they herded us toward the museum. Yes, another HCM museum. This one was much more impressive, but we breezed through, because there was an embalmed person to see.
Upon exiting the museum, we were duly informed that the mausoleum was closed already. It’s open from 8 am to 11am, but they closed it early because of the weather. Dammit! Right city, wrong time!
A young man was lurking near the mausoleum (not as creepy as it sounds) and offered to show us around. His price? Only 200,000 dong per person. Um, no. That’s $10 each. He agreed to do it for half, and we felt empowered by our haggling skills. What did our skills buy us? A guy walking around the soggy botanic gardens, telling us ” This tree. It very old.” Then he showed us the saddest caged baboon ever. Erm. Thanks. That was not good value for money.

He did take us to a beautiful temple, and showed us the lake where John McCain crashed (we had no idea it was in downtown Hanoi!), then left us to eat pho, which tasted great on a rainy day. We also tried a sticky sweet pancake bought from a street vendor at the temple. Filled with taffy-like caramel and sprinkled with coconut and peanuts. Mmmm.

So…back to the mausoleum the next morning. Third attempt was the charm. We went earlier this time, and a large crowd had come to pay their respects. We checked our bags and cameras (mandatory) and got in the queue.
It moved surprisingly fast, and we kept getting bumped by the family behind us: that famous disregard for personal space.
It was pretty cute. My shadow was the little grandpa, who kept stepping on the backs of my shoes. The granddaughter was getting all up in Ahna’s rear grill. We just resigned ourselves to it, because really, they were very excited to be visiting Uncle Ho. The viewing is a serious business: no talking, no laughing, no hands in your pockets, even outside in line!
We were ushered into the room , and everyone just circled around the class case. It was like sleeping beauty, except for the Ho Chi Minh beard. And the suit. And the guards. He was very well-lit, like a hollywood starlet.

And suddenly, we were back outside. Our lurker was lurking, and offered to “show us around” some more, but we’d had our fill of old trees that day.
We stopped and had a divine vietnamese coffee on the way back to the hotel, and made plans to visit Halong Bay. After some long discussions with Viet, hotel owner and travel agent extraordinaire, we picked a basic tour and ventured into the street for what turned out to be our favorite meal in Vietnam.

Streetcorner sidewalk stand? Check.
Miniature plastic stools? Check.
Customers drinking rice wine? Check.
What the hell are they serving? Check and check!
We had a delicious, mysterious egg white omelet filled with an unidentifiable savory herb. The guys sitting across from us shared their rice wine (you say YO! when you toast, by the way).
And we could not resist the balut. It’s a fetal duck egg, served with broth and sprinkled with chopped green onions. Amazing. Best dinner so far: simple, delicious, and truly representative of this wonderful country.

The next morning we were informed by Viet we’d been upgraded on our Halong Bay tour.
Cynical me thought it was fishy, but optimist Ahna thought we’d be alright.
Boy was she right! We were on a stunning boat, which made up for how crowded and touristy Halong Bay really is. It’s beautiful, no doubt about it, but peaceful? Not really. We visited a floating village and went kayaking in the jade waters.

The van ride back to Hanoi was interminable and the driver was a maniac so we were very happy to get back to Finnegan’s in time for dinner.
Gleefully, Viet had made arrangements for us to dine at a specialty restaurant in town. The specialty is dog, and when in Rome…
Viet sent his nephew along to order for us. Dog 3 ways: Sausage, grilled and stewed. We ordered a bottle of “men” brand vodka to wash it all down (and make it easier to eat that first bite).
To all the dogs we’ve loved in our lives: we’re sorry, but you are tasty-barbequed with lemongrass. The sausage was ok, and the stew was a little challenging. But we pretty much finished that grilled dog.
While we were eating- on our tiny, tiny stools on the sidewalk, natch- a couple of lanky white dudes stopped in the street.
“Come over and help us eat this”! we said.
“Is it yummy?” they said
Yeah, come try it.
Viktor and Wilco, Dutch travellers both, sat with us and drank vodka before helping themselves to some sausage.
We genuinely thought they knew we were at a dog restaurant. But they did not.
And after they found out, they stopped eating. Sissies.
Despite their lack of dog eating capabilities, they were really fun, and we had a few more beers, but had to stop, because we were exhausted, full of dog , and had to get up early the next morning to go back to Bangkok.

It was truly saddening to get on that plane. Vietnam and Cambodia, we heart you!

Hoi An and Hue. Whoohoo!

Thanks to Danni (she of the Cambodian elephant adventure), we decided to stop in Hoi An.
We had no idea what to expect, which is what made it so delightful.
It was like a dream: get up in the morning, rent a bike, ride to the beach, swim in the South China Sea, ride to town, eat, drink. Repeat.
The city still retains many of it’s french colonial buildings, and it glows with laterns at night. It was beautiful.
Despite being completely overrun with tourists, the city was undeniably seductive, and although we were only planning on staying a couple of nights, we stayed for 4.
Of course, we did take time to have clothes made: Hoi An is famous for their tailors, and we stumbled upon Vuong’s place.
At Vuong’s place, one minute you’re examining a sample, and the next you’ve ordered 3 skirts, and gown and shirt. How the hell did that happen? In our defense, Vuong was a very good saleswoman, and her brother was the perfect flirt, adding to our fun.

And the food? OMG. Our favorite was the country pancake, which is a fried disc of rice flour stuffed with bean sprouts and other goodies. You roll up a piece of crispy pancake in rice paper with some salad and herbs, and dip it in nuoc mam. It’s the best of all worlds: crispy, hot, cold, chewy, salty, minty. Yes.

Biking back from the beach our last day, we got separated in the crazy Vietnamese traffic.
I headed back toward the hotel,and Ahna bumped into Strongman.
“Hey” she told me when she got back to the hotel. ” I think we just found our ride to Hue”.
Turns out Strongman (who was shorter than Ahna and really called Cuong) works for a company called Easy Rider. They offer motorcyle treks all over Vietnam, and after two margaritas, it seemed like a really great idea to take a two day trek to Hue. Cuong met us at the bar, and we arranged to get picked up the next morning.
“How are they going to fit our luggage on those small cycles?” we wondered.
And then we thought about the family of five we’d just seen riding by on a scooter. They’ll figure it out. And they did.

Mr Van was Anha’s driver, and I got the mad strongman.
So off we went, first to the marble mountain, where there are at least 7 buddha grottos and caves. Then west towards the border of Laos.

Riding on the narrow roads gave us fresh persepective of the country. It’s hands down the best way to see things up close and personal.
We stoppped in a small village where they were making rice wine, sampled the wares, and visited with the kids.
They were also drying cinnamon bark at the side of the road. Cuong grabbed a stick and gave us some. We didn’t even think twice about nibbling on it. Roadside cinnamon sticks taste way better than the kind you get at Kroger.
We stashed some in our bags for later.

Further along, Mr Van saw some activity near the road, so we made a U turn to see what was happening. What was happening was that some men had found a very large boa constrictor, and were bleeding it from its lopped-off tail.
They were filling a pitcher with rice wine and snake’s blood. We felt bad for the snake. As Ahna pointed out, if they didn’t drink so much rice wine, they wouldn’t need to add the snake’s blood to make their women happy. We opted not to have a tipple.

An hour later we came to the mountain village of Prau. We were pleasantly suprised to be issued a decent hotel room, with clean sheets and very hot water.
We freshened up after a hard day on the road, and went to dinner with our moto gurus.
Roast duck with Saigon beer and rice wine. On the side we tried young bananas, which had a very bitter, tannic taste.
Van and Cuong speak fluent English, and we learned a lot about local culture and their childhoods. Van learned english from a book he received courtesy of US soldiers called “English for Today”. It contained useful phrases like ” In the North Pole, the Eskimos hunt seals for meat”.
Why a Vietnamese kid in the 60′s needs to know about the north pole is beyond us, but it was very interesting to hear him talk about his family and what happened to them during and after the war.
After dinner we went over to the sleepy main drag for a couple more beers and rice pancakes. We were the source of great amusement for the locals in Prau. All the kids got lollipops, as Cuong napped in the restaurant owner’s bed. Too much rice wine.

The next morning we got on the road pretty early-we think the guys might have had hangovers-and traveled along a portion of the Ho Chi Minh trail. The mountainous jungle is very beautiful, and we stopped at a waterfall for a swim, with tropical butterflies flitting about. It was tough getting out of that water and back on the bikes.
More lollipops were distributed at lunch, and the kids were very curious about us. Not for the first time, a random stranger asked to have a photo taken with one of us. Smiles all around in that little restaurant!

An hour later we were in Hue, our behinds were beyond sore, and our motorcycle adventure was over. We had so much fun with our drivers, and were mesmerized by the beauty of the country. We still kinda miss those guys.

Hue was not as beautiful as Hoi An, but interesting in its own right. Sitting on the banks of the perfume river (which does not at all describe how it really smells), it was the seat of imperial power for centuries.

We wandered along the riverside and-you guessed it- stopped to eat a stand full of locals. The owner came over and in vietnamese asked if we wanted something, or something else. Hmm. We ordered both somethings, and got a bowl of vegetables, cracklings, meat, noodles for Ahna and rice for me. A bowl of broth came on the side for us to add as we pleased. We slurped it down and then started eyeing the weird dessert everyone was eating. Still don’t know exactly what it was, but it’s a Hue specialty called “Cha”. Red beans, tapioca pearls, ginger, soy milk, purple yam, corn, and who knows what else. It was really good. The entire meal was $1.50, and we got friendly waves from everyone as we left.

We only had one full day in Hue, so off to the citadel we went. It was built in the 1800′s but has been damaged in the wars, and it’s in an interesting state of disrepair/restoration. We took cyclos around the old part of the city. Riding in a cyclo feels vaguely royal. We resisted waving.
There are bullet holes all over the walls of the forbidden city- makes it hard to forget the history of this place. Our one hour tour turned into 3 hours as our charming driver showed us more out of the way places in old town.
Ahna took her turn driving the cyclo, and we walked back to our hotel to pack for our flight to Hanoi the next morning….